Go to the linked article, it uses "something remarkable" where Slashdot used "Earth-shaking" in the summary. Not sure if Slashdot changed the word, or if NPR revised the article. Either way, the over-hype is as much the fault of the media as it is NASA.

itwbennett writes: "Pity those poor Japanese students who attend cram schools, either full time or in addition to their regular schooling, to have a shot at passing the grueling math entrance exams for Tokyo University. If Fujitsu has its way, those students will be upstaged by a robot. The company has set a goal for the year 2021 of building an artificial intelligence robot that can pass the exams."

alphadogg writes: Emma Watson, best known for her portrayal of Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies, has been named most dangerous celebrity to search for on the Web in McAfee's annual report. "Searches for the latest Emma Watson pictures and free downloads have more than a 12% chance to land on a malicious site that has tested positive for spyware, adware, spam, phishing, viruses or other malicious stuff," according to McAfee, whose study is based on the company's site ratings technology. Such searches appear to be even more dangerous when Watson's name is linked with terms such as "nude pictures" and "fakes," as cybercrooks bait bad websites to nab unsuspecting Web surfers, often offering them free downloads.

redletterdave writes: "The Yangtze River, the third longest river in the world traditionally known as the "golden watercourse," mysteriously blushed for the first time on Sept. 6. Residents in the surrounding area near the city of Chongqing, where the Yangtze connects to the Jialin River, literally stopped in their tracks when they noticed their once golden river had turned a shocking shade of red. Residents have carefully crept down to the riverbanks for the past few days to save some of the red, tomato juice-like river water in bottles. Early predictions from scientists say the red water was likely a result of pollution, but investigators are still investigating the unknown cause."

An anonymous reader writes: Lost amid the announcements for Amazon's new tablets and e-readers was the news that their latest Kindle Fire tablets would include advertisements. So-called 'Special Offers' would place ads on the devices' lock screens in a similar fashion to the lowest price Kindle e-readers. However, on the e-readers, you had the option to 'buy out' the ads by simple paying the difference in price between the cheaper device and the regular version. But Amazon has no confirmed there is no way to opt out of the ads on the new Kindle Fire tablets.

Pouring of concrete is analogous to software going to golden master. The architecture design effort that agile would apply to is everything that leads up to that point. Also architecture isn't just about making buildings that don't fall down, not every defect leads to jail time, some defects just mean the building isn't as nice as the client hoped for.

Hong Kong to US is about 150ms latency using conventional technology verizon. So taking your own example of needing 100 bits to transmit a useful message (I don't know if that is realistic), the message would need to be transmitted faster than 666bps just to break even with existing communications. Given the cost of neutrino detectors and the current state of technology it just doesn't seem likely.

I'm surprised the FOIA applies to state governments. They are independent governments from the U.S. government, and thus U.S. law only applies to U.S. government and interstate transaction. Not internal state government affairs.

The article doesn't specifically say FOIA, just "a freedom of information request". All states have enacted there own version of FOIA.

I far as I can tell, first-to-file applies only to parties that keep their inventions secret, in such a case the one that files first wins. If someone publishes their invention publicly, thus establishing prior art, the invention is no longer patentable.